


life through a window

by kangeiko



Category: Bourne Legacy (2012)
Genre: Gen, Identity Issues
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-08-28
Updated: 2012-08-28
Packaged: 2017-11-13 02:30:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,425
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/498453
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kangeiko/pseuds/kangeiko
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The world hasn't changed.  He just has a better toolbox now.</p>
            </blockquote>





	life through a window

**Author's Note:**

> So, I just saw the film. And it was great... but I think it was also pretty problematic, and borderline ableist in parts. I wanted to play around with some of the bits that didn't quite work for me. Obviously, heavily influenced by thoughts around _Flowers for Algernon_ , and not beta-read. Comments are welcome, especially if I've screwed up.

 

Marta had always been a smart girl; that much was obvious.  It was in the way she had looked at him when he told her about Kenneth James, in the brief moment of unrestrained pity in her eyes.  Here was someone to whom the experience of being 'less than' was something purely academic.  Oh, yes, Marta had always been a smart girl, and she’d made her parents proud.  That was so obvious, even Kenneth James would have seen it.

 

He doesn’t bother to explicitly tell Marta that he doesn’t think of himself as that person anymore; he makes an assumption – a pretty safe one – that she thinks it, and that’s enough.  It’s what a smart woman like her would think.  There’s no space in her for suspicion, not with his hand on hers, the edge of the latex glove rasping against her wrist.  In that ampoule was a hefty bump in intelligence, enough that she could convince herself it would make a new person, as if personality could be bottled.  _What a stupid thing to think_ , he’d thought, and had a flash of doubt over whether it had showed, but no – no.  Her eyes had softened, and in that moment of horrifying pity, she was willing to give him what he wanted.  (Because, he thought, she was just _that_ confident that their work was that good.  That they could spirit up a new person out of thin air.) 

 

Oh, there were conditions, of course, and he could see her mind tick over as she justifed it to herself. It wouldn’t be viralling off to be ‘enhanced’, however much his life was in danger, because that would just be greedy, and immoral, and possibly unethical.  Maybe desperation would have made her change her mind later on, but ‘later on’ might be too late, and he won’t make a bet on maybe when the sure thing’s just a moment away. No, he'd needed a sure thing, and he had one close to hand.

 

So there is was, writ large, the reason her eyes were so large and so wet, the difference that convinced her: the gap between _him_ and _Kenneth James_ was greater, in her eyes, than the gap between an average person and an enhanced one.  So she had yielded, and she had given him what he wanted, though her hands were shaking.

 

Then the needle was in his arm, and it was too late to back out.

 

 

*

 

What a difference 12 points make.

 

Twelve points more, and he’s at the minimum.  A little slow, sure, but fine for the army, where too much brains means maybe you don’t come back with them still in your head.  The minimum’s humiliating, but someone’s gotta be at the bottom, and reaching for anything more’s just pride.  Work with what you have, and maybe you’ll do well, despite the hand you’re dealt.  Work _hard_ , and there’ll be something at the end of it.

 

Take those twelve points away, though, and he’s not at the minimum.  He’s _Kenneth James_ , and his face hurts, and he can’t see very well, and no matter how hard he works, he’s never going to do well and get something at the end of it.  And then, suddenly, inexplicably, someone is offering him the chance to make something more with his life.  He doesn’t have to be a genius to seize it with both hands.

 

(Kenneth James managed to get through almost his entire tour of duty without getting blown up.  There were guys out there with twice the smarts that went home in a body-bag their first day out.)

 

*

 

Marta had always been a smart girl; that was the root of her particular problem. Byers, too; a smart boy and a smart man.  Good at talking around the problem, and framing it in a way that made Aaron feel like Kenneth James again. _Sin-eaters_ ; what other unit got that spiel?  Did they trot it out for every black ops agent having a crisis?  And what a stupid thing to allow their agents, not when they could hide it away and neaten it up.  No, it was just stupid. Byers may have liked the excrement they hoovered up, but he was deluding himself if he thought that this tidied things up for the rest of humanity, so that they could sail through, unsullied.  It wasn’t a fucking scale, after all, with them at one end – enhanced and smart and full of knowledge, eating all the shit-smeared sin with a grin on their stupid grunt faces – and Kenneth James on the other. In the middle, separated from each side by 12 points, the rest of humanity.  The statistical innocents, bound by degrees of freedom.

 

There was never, ever a day where he woke up and wished he’d never had the treatment.  Not a single fucking one.

 

*

 

Marta had always been a smart girl, and she made for a smart fucking woman, but in all the ways that mattered, she was still pretty fucking dumb. 

 

Point the first: she never asked him how to stop what was happening.  Maybe she didn’t think that there was any way, but she shouldn’t have assumed that stopping it was a priority of his. Ask, and watch for the reaction.  Instead, she’d accepted that he’d saved her life, and taken that as a sign that he was on her side.

 

Well, maybe.  For now.  But if _he_ had ever done that, he would still have been hauling shit for Byers with his dick in his hands, and that’s too stupid for words.

 

Point the second: she never questioned whether she’d be better off alone.  Or maybe he’s being unkind, and she did all her thinking while he’d sweating out his spleen across that bed.  Maybe.  He kinda doubts it.  She’s too attached to the minutiae of honour – little notes to say where she’d gone, calling out a warning when it would draw attention to her – to have thought it through clearly.  No: she’d decided to stick with him, whatever happened.  Which was fucking dumb, frankly.  Hell, if he had a choice, _he_ wouldn’t stick with him, he’d leave his own damn ass hanging out to dry.  That much trust was a fucking disgrace.

 

The final point, point the third.  And this, this is inexcusable, except that it’s the only one he _can_ excuse, because he helped her along.  It’s the only point that made any sense to him, even though he knew he was lying his fucking head off. It’s her looking at him with her big wet eyes while the needle slid home.  __

 

In that moment, and all the pauses in between, he wanted to go back to that feeling – the needle in his arm, and the slow pressure of the ampoule emptying – and be really fucking stupid and tell her _everything_.  What a fucking laugh that would have been, huh?  Poor Marta Shearing, so fucking smart that she couldn’t even conceive of the horror of losing that, of having all her smarts melt clean away; _of course_ she had understood.  She couldn’t have empathised more if he’d been threatened with losing his sight.

 

So, yeah, this was stupidity on his part, and proof that smarts were not what kept your brains intact.  Here he was, with the deck beneath his feet, and viralled off both greens and blues - something he had _never_ thought an option - and all he wanted to do was tell Marta about Kenneth James.  All he wanted to do was tell her about a lifetime of _not good enough_ , and somehow managing to get his dream job just the same.  He wanted to tell her that it was Kenneth James who had spotted Larx-03, and who’d lifted the foreman’s watch that was currently paying their way.  He wanted to show her Kenneth James’s half-Nelson, and how he could break a man’s neck without even straining; and he wanted to ask her if she could tell the difference between that sure, swift _snap_ , and any move Aaron Cross could throw out.  He wanted to show her Kenneth James’s wide-eyed look, the one that made people think him soft and appealing and helpless, and want to put their hands in his and trust him with their life. 

 

He wanted to show her how Kenneth James had convinced Byers to enrol him in Outcome.

 

Marta smiled at him, the sun in her hair and not the least bit afraid. “What are you thinking about?” She asked.

 

He let the map roll up in his hands. “Nothing,” he said.

 

 

*

 

fin


End file.
